December 28, 2012_Escondido California_USA_|Christina Entrekin is the new Director of the Social Services at Interfaith Community Services | Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle

After working as an attorney, an advocate for American Indians and other jobs that required her to move 71 times since graduating high school, Christina Entrekin has brought her extensive background to Escondido as director of social services at Interfaith Community Services.

“My role really is coming in and looking at the great work we’ve been doing for 30 years, looking at the needs of our community, and deepening what we do,” Entrekin said about her approach to her job, which started Dec. 10.

In a news release announcing her hiring, Interfaith Executive Director Richard Batt said Entrekin’s leadership skills and value of diversity will benefit the nonprofit’s goal of helping North County families overcome poverty and attain self-sufficiency.

“Christina brings a powerful combination of education, experience and passionate commitment to meeting needs among the poorest and most marginalized populations in North America,” Batt said in the release.

Batt also said Entrekin will help Interfaith create new partnerships with other providers and create a social service program that will be a role model for California.

“We’re going to do a pretty big program evaluation, then identify what areas we can improve,” Entrekin said. “I know that one thing we are going to do is strengthen our partnerships with providers in the community, and also tap into the expertise we have in-house and deepen the level of social services we can provide to the client.”

Entrekin, who had worked as director of programs at the Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society for the past four years, said reaching out to other providers will help create a broad, holistic approach to serving clients.

“By holistic, I mean a holistic plan of care that includes the whole community,” she said. “It’s working with that individual in becoming a participant in planning their care and identifying what strengths they bring.”

Social service agencies are shifting to a strength-based model of practice that requires accountability from clients, Entrekin said.

That means Interfaith will not provide a one-size-fits-all approach by addressing only immediate needs, but rather will create an “eco map,” which Entrekin explained is a graphic representation of all the systems in a person’s life.

The map will identify a person’s strengths, including others who are available for help, she said. The practice also helps clients identify other needs they have rather than the most pressing ones, which often are food and shelter.

Entrekin, 45, was born in the Inland Empire and grew up on Catalina Island before moving to San Francisco, where she earned a sociology degree from San Francisco State University.

She later earned a law degree from the Arizona State University College of Law and worked as an attorney with the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, where her duties included advising advocates and attorneys regarding sexual violence and civil law needs of American Indian survivors of sexual violence and their families.

“I wanted to work with my community,” said Entrekin, who is Oneida on her mother’s side of her family.

Entrekin said she was interested in working for equal access to justice, and she began to focus on Native American children and families in the child welfare system and juvenile justice system.

While her work at Interfaith will not focus on specific ethnic groups, Entrekin said families she helped in her previous positions had universal issues that are shared by her new clients.

Entrekin also has intimate understandings of issues faced by foster families and adoptive parents, having adopted two foster children. She also has a 5-year-old son.